About the Author
Lisa Steele
Articles by Lisa Steele
A Guide to Different Colored Chicken Eggs
Imagine the excitement of peering into your nesting boxes and finding a rainbow of different colored eggs every day. There are more than 60 breeds of chickens recognized by the American Poultry Association and hundreds of other chicken breeds that have been developed worldwide.
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Can Chickens and Ducks Live Together?
“Can chickens and ducks live together?” is one of the most common questions I get from readers. Since I’ve been raising my chickens and ducks in the same coop and run for years, my answer is always yes, but I do have a few cautions if you’re considering a mixed flock.
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Alternatives to Culling Chickens
My oldest chicken is eight years old. She still manages to pop out a handful of eggs a year, but they’re usually wrinkled and a bit misshapen with thin shells. She certainly isn’t winning any awards for egg production and we can’t rely on her for breakfast any longer!
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How to Make Suet Cakes for Chickens
Need some ideas for what to feed your backyard chickens over the winter? As the weather gets colder, the treats I feed my flock focus more on energy and warming properties instead of being cooling and hydrating like summer treats.
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10 Tips for Fermenting Chicken Feed
Have you given any thought to how fermenting chicken feed can benefit your flock of backyard chickens? Fermenting is all the rage nowadays, both in people foods (think yogurt, sauerkraut, sourdough bread, buttermilk, kimchi, apple cider vinegar, even beer and wine!) and chicken diets as well, although the process has been used for hundreds of years as a food preservation method.
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10 Facts About Ducks: Are Ducks the New Chickens?
Over the last few years, keeping backyard chickens has become all the rage. Whether it’s wanting to know where their food is coming from, a desire to be more self-sufficient or merely wanting to go back to the basics, chicken coops are popping up in suburban backyards of families all across the country.
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Hatching Duck Eggs
Hatching duck eggs is an awe-inspiring experience. Since domestic duck breeds rarely go broody (i.e. sit on fertile eggs until they hatch), using an incubator is generally your best bet.
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Caring For Baby Chicks with Pasty Butt
Chick season will soon be in full swing. If you are new to having backyard chickens and just starting out caring for baby chicks, you should be aware of a potentially life-threatening, but easily treatable condition that is fairly common, affecting mainly shipped day-old chicks.
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Saxony Duck Breed Profile
The most often-recognized backyard duck breed is probably the snow-white Pekin duck, closely followed by the domestic mallard, which is mottled brown with blue wing tips. However, domestic ducks come in many other wonderful breeds that should be considered if you are looking for something a bit different.
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Six Winter Keeping Tips for Backyard Chickens
Many people ask: Do chickens need heat in winter? The answer is backyard chickens are far more cold-hardy than you may imagine. Courtesy of fall molting, chickens should have a full set of new fluffy feathers for winter that will keep them perfectly comfortable in temperatures down to 40 degrees and just fine well below freezing, assuming they are in good health.
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